Economic Growth = Growth in Contentment?

By Christopher Shea

Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

The Beijing city skyline, including the China Central Television (CCTV) tower.

A study finds that, despite significant economic growth in recent years, most people in China are not noticeably happier than they were before the boom. The well-off do appear to be “slightly happier than before,” reports Wired Science,

but little appears to have changed among middle-income earners. Among lower income brackets, life satisfaction seems to have dropped precipitously.

These trends are not an argument against capitalism or economic growth —but they do hint at shortcomings in using standard economic metrics as shorthand for well-being.

“There is no evidence of an increase in life satisfaction of the magnitude that might have been expected to result from the fourfold improvement in the level of per capita consumption,” write researchers led by economist Richard Easterlin in their May 15 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper.

The purported lack of a connection between growth and happiness has been deemed the “Easterlin Parodox.” But in the Wired post, the economist Justin Wolfers is quoted objecting that the survey data the researchers relied upon is not solid enough to support their conclusions. “I think China is a great question,” he says. “I wish we had great data to answer it.”